Alan Lomax's work documenting the music and lore of the rural American South is well-known, but few are familiar with the folklife survey he made in the Upper Midwest in 1938. Under the auspices of the Library of Congress, he traveled in Michigan and Wisconsin for three months, recording (on 250 acetate discs and eight reels of film) a staggering wealth of material — French-Canadian and maritime ballads; bawdy lumberjack songs; Delta blues in Detroit; lyric pieces of Serbian, German, and Lithuanian origin; dance tunes played by Finnish accordionists and Native fiddlers, among much else.